


Little Parade Of Weird

by TerresDeBrume



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Community: norsekink, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve doesn’t know if he should be worried that the first eyes he looks to for an explanation of Natasha’s exclamation are Loki.</p>
<p>He does seem to be at the… ah… head of today’s little parade of weird anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Parade Of Weird

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt on Norsekink:
> 
> _So you might already know that Loki can survive decapitation, but did you know that in Thor 84 Thor pulls off Loki's head and then carries it around with him for two issues while Loki yells at him?_
> 
> _Give me that. Loki, for whatever reason loses his head, but he doesn't die because he's a magical badass. Thor, either to be a jerk, or trying to help his brother find his body, carries his head around (by his hair) and there is much bickering._
> 
> Basically, I just took the crack factor and ran with it.

Steve bursts through the kitchen door, shield in hand, ready to strike, and scans the room in a glance.

 

“What is it? What’s happening, I heard Pepper scream!”

“Actually, that was Tony,” Pepper says from her spot near the counter, looking pale but collected. “Though this time I can’t really blame him.”

 

Steve looks to where her thumb is pointing, and takes three steps back when he notices Thor standing there with Loki’s head hanging from his left hand while the right one looks in the middle of a ‘okay stop hyperventilating now please’ gesture.

Steve doesn’t like being the voice of reason –that he often gets to _be_ the voice of reason because, apparently, not knowing how to work cell phones do great harm to you credibility in the 21 st century- it always means that if something goes wrong, you’ll be the one to blame… But hey, someone has to be, and Pepper genuinely looks two seconds away from vomiting, so Steve takes a deep breath and asks the first reasonable question he can think of:

 

“Is this your brother’s head?”

“Well,” Thor says, “yes, it is but….”

“It speaks,” Tony says, still frozen with his back to the fridge and looking like Thor is holding something very, very vile in his hand –which he is, but you know what Steve means.

“ _It_ has a name, Tin Man,” the head says, and Steve forces himself to think of this as a movie –maybe they can make them look that realistic now, he can still hope- “And _it_ would like you to remember it.”

“ _It speaks_ ,” Tony repeats, because apparently he’s stuck on that –not that Steve blames him.

“There was an accident you see,” Thor keeps trying to explain, “Dr. Doom was somehow involved and my brother here received an unfortunate scratch so….”

“A scratch?!” Tony exclaims ins disbelief, “You call this a _scratch_?!”

“Look, Tony, calm down,” Steve says, because he gets that times have changed and everything, but he’s pretty sure Tony won’t like remembering producing sounds that high.

“IT _SPEAKS_ , STEVE! I AM A SLEEP DEPRIVED HUNGOVER GENIUS, _I CAN NOT DEAL WITH THIS SHIT WITHOUT PROPER CAFFEINATION!_ ”

 

For once –and Steve’s starting to feel this is going to be something _he_ won’t like to remember- Pepper is no help in calming Tony down, namely because she had to leave the room about thirty seconds ago, muttering something about it being ‘too much this time’ and needing ‘a bloody extraordinary raise’ so it’s down to the mistimed soldier to calm everyone down.

(In all actuality he ends up threatening Tony with bodily harm if he doesn’t go back to his workshop _right now_ before he sits Thor down.)

 

“Look, Thor, can you… can you please put it away somewhere?”

“I’m _still_ here,” Loki says, and Steve jumps just a little, but he settles back and purposefully looks only at Thor.

“What happened?” He asks.

“Well as I said, this is but a scratch,” Thor booms, fingers still clutching his brother’s hair. “My brother is perfectly able to survive this way until we find his body back.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘find his body back’? Does this mean it’s running the streets as we speak?”

“Weeeeeell….” At least, Thor has the decency to looks slightly embarrassed.

 

That is, until Clint gets in the mix.

 

“Hey, I heard the billionaire philanthropist rage about talking heads on my way there, anybody know what he m—oh _wow_! Nevermind, think I’ve found my answer.”

 

Clint bends down to put his face level with Loki’s, and his lips spread into the slightly-manic grin of a kid who just found a new antler to flood.

 

“Dude, this is absolutely awesome,” he says to Thor. “D’you do it yourself?”

“What? Of course not!” Thor protests at the same time as Loki says: “As if he even _could_!”

“Do not be so pretentious brother,” Thor warns, “we both know I am the better fighter.”

“Just because you’re the most brutish doesn’t mean—”

“Hey Cap, what d’you think would happen if I made him drink? Would probably just come out under right?”

“Well, I don’t think he even has a throat to swallow with in the first pla—” Steve catches himself before he finishes his sentence, which is just as well because Thor is nearly pouting at him, and he’s really, really not sure that Loki can’t hex him even without his head. “Hum, anyway. We can’t keep him here like… that. And besides if his body’s somewhere in the street, it’s going to traumatize someone for sure… so we need to find it back.”

“I agree with you, Steve Rogers,” Thor booms, “But I fear the people of Midgard would not be too happy about seeing us in company of my brother.”

 

Steve thinks they’d be more shocked by the vision of an Avenger with a _head_ in his _hand_ than by it being Loki’s, but he tactfully keeps silent as Clint chimes in:

 

“Maybe we should store it in the fridge while we’re out looking for the other part?”

“ _Firstly_ , complete or not I am still here with you,” Loki intervenes forcefully, “and I would greatly appreciate it if you could avoid discussing me like I’m an inanimate object. And _secondly_ , if you _dare_ to put my head away like a honey jar, I will change your bow, arrows and underwear into snails.”

“Aw, you sure? Not even a nice dry cupboard?”

“ _Snails_. Very clingy ones.”

“Okay _stop_ ” Steve cuts in when Clint looks like he’s about to answer. “No storage for Loki then, but we still need to figure out what to—”

“Что то?!

 

Steve doesn’t know if he should be worried that the first eyes he looks to for an explanation of Natasha’s exclamation are Loki.

He does seem to be at the… ah… _head_ of today’s little parade of weird anyways.

Nevertheless, Captain America in his full morning attire –a T-shirt and his boxers- lead Thor the Thunderer and Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton –who, might we add, is looking more gleeful by the second- out of Tony Stark’s kitchen, complete with Loki’s severed head making a running commentary of a) their actions and b)Tony’s (or rather Pepper’s) decorating skills –or lack thereof.

 

This leads to the three –and a half- of them walking on a flabbergasted Black Widow –black leather and all- roughly fisting at Loki’s collar and looking distinctly _murderous_.

 

“What. The _hell._ Is this?”

“Brother, we found your body!” Thor says happily, and Clint just goes off laughing like a madman while Natasha glares at him with the power of years of blackmail material behind it. “See?!” Thor continues, extending Loki’s head to where his body is reaching out to feel its way through the corridor, “all that remains to do is to get the two of you back together, and you will be all set to go back to threatening midgardian lives and being stopped by us!”

 

Thor spins on his heel to face Natasha then -causing Loki’s hands to miss his head by an inch, and Loki’s head to yell something halfway between ‘stop flailing you dimwit!’ and ‘no you _other_ right!’- and continues smiling happily.

 

“Nothing to fear anymore, milady,” Thor says as Clint braces himself against the wall, and Steve’s cheek are seriously starting to hurt by this point.

“WILL YOU JUST STOP MOVING AROUND YOU CLUELESS BUFFOON?!” Loki’s head yells while his body catches Thor’s cheek with a resounding _smack_.

 

Loki’s body then snatches his head from Thor’s hands and simply puts it back on his neck, just like putting on a hat before leaving a room, and the sight of a headless body _huffing_ is simply too much for Steve, who just bursts out laughing, almost tripping on Clint who, obviously, has given up on equilibrium altogether and is now lying on the floor, filling the hallway with hysterical laughter.

 

“You will _pay_ for this,” Loki warns Thor. “ _Dearly_.”

 

And he vanishes in a puff of green smoke, leaving the Avengers to go back to their usual business.

 

Getting Tony to come out of his workshop proves a bit tricky, but Clint lures him out with recordings of the morning news –full of flailing Loki trying to feel his way back to his head- and then promptly wastes his own efforts by making fun of Tony’s screaming fit this morning, eagerly joined by a good-natured but slightly oblivious Thor.

 

(Tony sulks for about three days, maintaining that the headless trick was _horrifying_ , and that there is nothing wrong with finding _decapitation_ a _little bit_ disturbing _fuck you very much_.)

 

Steve tries baking cookies –that’s how you comfort people, right?- but he’s a man from the forties, and kitchen hardware is confusing these days, so he mostly succeeds in setting the fire alarm off and getting himself temporarily banned from the kitchen.

 

Tony continues to maintain his reaction was perfectly reasonable, Thor and Clint continue to tease him about it, to which he replies that _he_ doesn’t have millenniums of training in handling Loki so _there_.

 

(His mood greatly improves the next time they meet Loki and Clint’s things, including his underwear, are turned into snails, and Thor’s armor goes a brilliant shade of pink patterned by creatures nobody recognizes but that, judging by his face, must be the asgardian equivalent of teddy bears or something equally humiliating.)

 

Nobody mentions the high-quality scotch that ‘magically’ appears in Tony’s personal reserve after that, just in case.


End file.
